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Not Just a Jump, but Levitation

Natsumi Hayashi does not call the photos she posts on Yowayowa Camera Woman Diary “jump shots.” A jump, she says, is composed of many movements. And those who go up must come down.

No, Yowayowa Camera Woman is not jumping.

She’s levitating.

Ms. Hayashi, who lives in Tokyo, presents photographs of herself looking light as air, shot mostly around the city. The images have earned her a respectable following on her blog, as well as on Facebook and Twitter.

Natsumi HayashiPosted May 20, 2011.

Levitation photos are supposed to emphasize the natural flow of time, said Ms. Hayashi, who usually shoots with a shutter speed of 1/500th of a second or faster. A crowded scene is more difficult to shoot, because the people in the background have to look as if they’re going about their business.

The pose, too, is important. A position that feels right may not mesh well with the environment. “I must be aware of the shapes of my arms and legs and make slight adjustments in every jump,” she said.

Yowayowa Camera Woman looks as if she’s doing a slow, lyrical dance through the air. The more complicated — in some cases, dangerous — the pose appears, the less inclined a viewer will be to anticipate a landing. Ms. Hayashi holds her head high, averting her eyes from her landing point. She releases her muscles. She points the soles of her feet to the sky.

And she readies herself for a fall, knowing that it’s important to maintain the pose in the air.

“I cannot easily suggest my style to everyone,” said Ms. Hayashi, who, like an athlete, uses therapy to learn to control her body. (Still, she did fall — and land on her jaw — once.)

Ms. Hayashi took her first levitation photo in September 2010. She had been drawn to colors in the scene — the yellow of the sunflower in her friend’s hand, the blue of the toilet paper packaging and the pink of his socks. “I asked him to bend over in order to put everything in good composition,” she wrote in Japanese via e-mail. “But at the moment I released the shutter, he suddenly jumped.”

The image, she thought, had an accidental weightlessness. She decided to keep shooting, calling out orders: “Higher! Relax!”

“In many cases, I never give up and keep jumping until I’m satisfied with my photo,” she said of the self-portraits that make up her oeuvre. From five shoots, each with 200 to 300 frames apiece, she usually uploads only one photo. Because the project is a diary, she focuses on the people and places she sees in daily life, seeking good light and the coveted decisive moment. While she no longer posts every day, she continues to post in the style of an imaginary diary, chronologically, as if no time has passed.

So why does she do it?

“People often ask me, ‘Don’t you tumble?'” she said. “But I have never been asked, ‘Why are you doing this?'”

Ms. Hayashi said she has difficulty thinking “like a grown-up.” She has fantasies of escaping from the confines of gravity. “I wanted to express myself as an honest person ‘whose feet are not firmly planted on the ground’ by shooting myself being free of the gravity of the Earth,” she said.

“When I am free of the gravity inside the picture, I feel free of any obligation to the society and live without being bound to many things.”